


Divinity

by cauldronofdoom



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, Gen, failed crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-15
Updated: 2012-11-15
Packaged: 2017-11-18 17:53:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/563787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cauldronofdoom/pseuds/cauldronofdoom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It took a few weeks, but Tony, Bruce, and Jane finally cracked the problem. The Avengers can now go back and see the friends they'd made in that other world.</p><p>Too bad it's centuries in the future there, and... Hey! Is that mural of *us*?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Divinity

**Author's Note:**

> For this prompt: While fighting evil, the team falls through some kind of negative space wedgie and ends up on an alien planet--one that not even Thor has heard of, though the inhabitants are still of the same basic human/aesir build, and the community they land in is only about stone-age level technology. While trying to find their way home, they make nice with the natives, tells stories, and maybe help out a little with the local evil-fighting needs. When they eventually find out how to go back, they have to leave kind of abruptly, without saying proper goodbyes.
> 
> A little time passes, and Jane cracks the Bifrost problem or Tony builds a TARDIS on a dare or something; point is, they can now go back to their alien buddies and say hi. Except when they get there, they realize that somehow, several generations have passed...and the Avengers are now revered as gods, with a mythology built up out of embroidered, remixed versions of actual events.
> 
> Five of them are like, O______________O. Thor's just like, "Not again."

“We diiiiiid it!” Tony sang, sliding into the kitchen in his socks, jumping on the table, and performing an air guitar solo that no one recognized due to how horrifically he mangled the singing.

Clint raised his eyebrows and shoved at the knee closest to him. “Did what?”

“Finished that Bifrost thing we were working on.” Bruce answered, walking in and picking up one of the cookies Natasha and Steve had just finished baking. The scent was everywhere in the tower, making it obvious where the team would congregate.

Tony flipped himself into a graceful arch, still on his knees, to look at Thor. Upside-down. “Your girlfriend is awesome, did you know that? We’ve invited her into Team Science, but she’s trying to insist on daily coffee cup and pizza box purges. Negotiations are still ongoing.”

“I refuse to work in that sty you call a lab, Tony.” Jane remarked as she also entered the kitchen, bringing a carefully balanced armful of dirty cups with her. Thor and Steve immediately jumped to assist her.

“Tony, why does my favourite antique tea cup have coffee stains in it?” Natasha asked, her voice dangerously soft.

Tony flipped himself onto his stomach and gave her his most charming grin. “For SCIENCE, of course! Besides, it was Jane that brought it down. I just refilled it for her after she finished that awful swill she had in it.”

“It’s not swill, Tony, it’s called Bengal Spice tea. It’s hardly my fault you can’t handle anything with more than two flavours.” She sniped back, before turning to the rest of the room. “We’ve finished that machine to let you go visit your alien buddies, that’s all. It’s also why Tony’s not wearing shoes.”

“Rest in piece, dear steel-toed boots.” Bruce intoned solemnly, though his eyes were laughing. “Thank you for helping us figure out that inverted variable before something sentient got shredded.”

“If they were Tony’s shoes, are you sure they weren’t sentient?” Natasha asked innocently. “After all, they spent a great deal of time around Tony’s feet, didn’t they?”

“You laugh now, but it was them or your teacup.” He shot back, before scrambling to hide behind Steve in exaggerated fear at her murderous expression. 

“You really mean that?” Steve asked, good manners having him turning to face Tony even as the man continued to attempt to hide behind him. Clint and Thor didn’t even try to stifle the laughter at the ensuing dance. “We can go see the Elnarrans again?”

“Cookies first. Then we’ll go visit.”  
*  
“This doesn’t look right. Are you sure you got the right place?” Steve was the first person to speak up when they landed in a lavish building that certainly hadn’t been present in the field they’d been playing that weird lacross/football hybrid their hosts had enjoyed before SHIELD, with Dr. Foster’s help, had managed to reverse their supposedly one-way trip via AirDoom.

“The mountains are the same.” Clint responded, immediately having gone to check out the windows. “It’s the same spot, just… not.” He turned, and his eyes went wide as he spied the mural behind them. “Uhh, you’re probably going to want to see this for yourself, guys.”

They turned, only to be confronted with a giant, ornate, gem encrusted gold mural. Of themselves.

Tony, unsurprisingly, was the first to speak. “I don’t think ‘aerodynamic’ translated very well into their language.” He mused. “Those spikes could be used as sails, and I don’t have wings on my helmet.”  
*  
The high priest discovered them there, much to his obvious delight. “That’ll teach those non-believers.” He had huffed under his breath after being assured of their identities by having Tony recite pi to the hundredth decimal place (which he’d done on a drunken dare the previous visit, and had now become their equivalent of the Eleusinian Mysteries or something). He obviously hadn’t reckoned on super-hearing, lip-reading skills, or JARVIS, but had been delighted by Clint calling him on it. Apparently limited omniscience was now in his skill set.

They hadn’t tried too hard to convince him this wasn’t a visit to see if he was still running the church (seriously, church! Most of the Avengers didn’t even go to church!) in accordance with their ‘divine will’ and ‘sacred teachings’. He’d left them in the Hall of Glory to look at their respective Holy Books and divine sculptures.

It was… enlightening… to see themselves as others did, and so innocently portrayed. There was none of the slut-shaming, the distrust of aliens or Russians, or the fear of the Hulk that so often bled into interactions in their own world.   
*  
Tony was revered as a God of War and Knowledge, with no mention made of his seduction skills despite having flirted with everyone on the previous visit. Instead, there was a dramatic retelling (and embellishment) of his kidnapping and Stane’s subsequent betrayal that portrayed the Ten Rings as demons, and the Ten Rings themselves as the interconnected Mobius strips that formed Hell. That story had been told at the same time as the pi incident after he’d been asked about the arc reactor (it was apparently the light of hope, visible in even the darkest of circumstances, if only people were brave enough to reach out for it).

Steve had placed his hand on Tony’s shoulder as he finished reciting his epic poem, and Natasha was stroking the back of one hand delicately, grounding him firmly in the now. He smiled at them, forcibly putting these thoughts out of his mind. “Obviously, I need to steal Steve’s shield and Thor’s helmet. Then they could just call me Athena and not have to bother inventing a whole new dogma.”

Clint snorted. “You do know she was a chaste virgin, right?”  
*  
Bruce, despite his shyness, had found a spot in their hearts as the God of Peace. His Holy Book emphasised calm, rational decisions above all else. He had temples full of monks, all practicing the few yoga moves he had taught and drinking a tea he’d fallen in love with in an attempt to find Nirvana. Non-violence and logic were his domains, and he was revered for seeing the inherent goodness in everyone.

Green was their colour of mourning.  
*  
Natasha was their beloved Goddess of Death, gathering her tattered people to her bosom for healing after the trials of life were done. Death, and vengeance. She ruled over Hell with an iron fist, inflicting painful and imaginative punishments on those who had hurt others.

Her priests were confessionals, healers, and occasionally assassins. A hidden ledger held the names of the secret killers who were sent forth in her name to deliver those who abused their powers into her hands for sentencing. The assassins, their marks, and the sponsors who called the hit.

The only ones who survived the orders were the assassins. Marks were eliminated, and sponsors committed ritual suicide upon completion of the mission.

And yet the people still loved her. (Red meant love and sacrifice as well as death, and it was considered a good colour. Not like green.)  
*  
Clint was the Judge. His ‘hawk eyes’ were capable of seeing everything someone did, as well as into their hearts and minds, the better to learn their intentions. His devotees worked closely with Natasha’s, especially on the hidden missions. The secret council was comprised of five members of his clergy and four of hers, though most of the assassins prayed to both.

It was him the people feared and tried to appease. It was him that was often portrayed as emotionless and hard. (Purple was their equivalent to grey.)

Except when someone lied. His clerics acted as judges, and the punishments for lying in court were stronger than even murder. They were trained in many techniques similar to what humans did to figure out if someone was lying. Should that be suspected, those same youths and maidens that filled Natasha’s hidden ranks were unhooded, and they were relentless in their pursuit of the truth. There was even the tale of one such young man that hunted down leads and listened at windows for forty years before finally uncovering the last of the evidence in a case, a coup that sentenced two ninety-something murderers and five lying accomplices to death, the better for Natasha and Clint to take care of them.

Tony stared at his mural for a moment longer after Clint finished reciting from his book, Natasha still gathered up between them like she had been since the first verse of hers. “They gave you a hawk. And it has human eyes. You have hawk eyes, and it has human ones.”

“That’s not even the best part.” Clint replied, smirking through sheer force of will. “The hawk’s name is Coulson, and he sees everything.”  
*  
Steve was, unsurprisingly, the King of the Gods. His holy writ was full of ‘love your fellow man’, and ‘do your best, always’. It was refreshing to come up with a characterization so similar to what they were used to, but Steve still shook his head sadly.

“Seven decades or seven centuries, they still can’t get me right.” He grouched, glaring at the image that portrayed him so wholesomely even his own teeth ached. The others, who had been on the receiving end of a few well planned pranks as well as having been treated to a spectacular temper tantrum that had involved breaking Tony’s TV and swearing up a blue streak after his image was attached as endorsement to some hate speeches, weren't surprised by this complaint. The press conference that followed was particularly entertaining, as no one had expected anyone who smiled like Steve to be able to verbally flay someone with that skill.  
*  
Thor had seemingly ignored all of their revelations, staring still at the large mural of all of them at the end of the hall.

“Thor? You still with us?” Bruce asked, touching the taller man hesitantly on the arm.

“Hmm? Oh, yes, sorry. I was simply caught up in déjà vu, that is all.” He looked around them and shook his head. “This is just like Scandinavia all over again.”

“… Again?”

**Author's Note:**

> It was supposed to be funny, but it became angsty. It was also supposed to be a minifill, but I fail at succinct too. Should this give anyone else plot bunnies, feel free to chase them.


End file.
